Meat and many other foods are traditionally cooked in an oven or a pan, and often with various condiments and flavour enhancing agents to provide a tasty and appealing flavoursome cooked dish. It is well known that cooking meat can lead to a certain amount of messiness of the oven or pan and surrounding surfaces. The degree of mess that needs to be cleaned up post-cooking can vary markedly depending on the nature of the food being cooked, the temperature of cooking, and other factors. It is commonplace for the walls of the oven or the surfaces surrounding an open cooking pan to become splattered and stained with fat and oil, and cooking juices, etc. Cooking meat normally requires a considerable amount of cleaning of surfaces after the cooking process.
There is an increasing demand for food preparation in the home to be fast and convenient, and with a minimum of clean-up required after cooking.
It is also important to be able to flavour the food being cooked with herbs, spices and other flavouring agents. Such ingredients can be added before or during cooking. They can be added individually or as a mix, but care must be taken to add the right amounts of each to give the desired flavour of cooked food. Sometimes when adding spices to meat that is being cooked or about to be cooked (e.g. by sprinkling on the meat), it is easy to add too much or too little or to add too much in some places and none in other places.
Simple cooking techniques have been developed over many years attempting to address these needs, with some success. But the typical home cook continues to search for an easy and convenient way of cooking meat and vegetables cleanly and with added flavourings and garnishes.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/890,947 (published as US 2005-0013951) describes a packaging material for a cook-in food package formed from an aluminium foil sheet for providing uniform heat distribution, and a paper sheet for direct contact with the food and for providing a non-stick surface.
DE 2900195 describes an insert for a frying pan which requires no oil or fat for the frying of meat. The insert consists of a disc having a diameter slightly larger than the bottom of the frying pan, and is made of paper with a silicone polymer coating.
The Japanese patent application published as JP 2000-037171 concerns a spice containing sheet capable of uniformly and moderately imparting a spice, such as salt or a condiment, to a food preparation. According to this patent application, hydrocolloids, like corn starch, potato starch, rice starch or tapioca are used to adhere herbs, spices and flavouring substances to the sheet. The drawback of this practice is that hydrocolloids are poor transmitters of heat. They tend to get too hot and do not to melt. There is therefore a high risk of burning the preparation, especially any herbs and spices used as garnishes, and also the sheet. The hydrocolloids function solely as a glue.
The applicant has now found a simple and effective way to flavour food in readiness for cooking and to cook the food so that there is a minimum of splashing and splattering of cooking juices onto walls and other surfaces, without burning of garnishes or any cooking materials, and where the addition of oil or fat by the cook for cooking the food is avoided.
The object of the invention is to provide a cooking aid that overcomes, at least in part, one or more of the above problems with known cooking methods.